I've been a trucker for the last ten years but now I am back home at "Camp Chaos" and I will be working at the Fontana terminal as a safety specialist. I hope now that I'm home I'll have a lot more time for blogging!


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Hello everyone, Sue and I arrived home today after a mad dash across the country. Last Friday we were in Elkton Maryland wondering if we were going to get a load to CA in time to be at Johnny Brockmeier's and Juliana Lee's graduation which is tomorrow. After delivering our load in Maryland, we were sent to Bristol PA to pick up a load that was to deliver in Tulare CA Tuesday by 2:00PM. It seemd like it would be impossible to be in CA Tuesday. 2500 miles in four days or maybe less.... The load wasn't even ready when we arrived in Bristol, a suberb of Philadelphia. I needed as much of friday as I could get if I had any hopes of being in CA by tuesday. We finally left about 5:00pm so I had to drive till past midnight.
One way we know that there may not be enough time to deliver the load is a message that comes over our satilite communication system...Qualcomm... It seems the computer knows how much time I have to drive,,,it takes the time I leave and figures 50 mph all the way to the delivery point, and if there isn't enough time then it sends a message to us... "Keep the load moving, utilizing your legal hours, do not run over hours. We will either re-power the load or we will change the delivery appointment"...whenever I get that message, I know it is going to be tight. I'm thinking to myself...lets see, if I go the most direct route west, across PA on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, that isnt going to be any good. Sue and I just came that way from Chicago and there was 100 miles of construction zones... lane closures, bottlenecks, backups, the best I could do would be 45 - 50 mph all the way across PA then 55 mh across Ohio, 60 mph across Indiana and then 55 mph across Illinois. I would be in St. Louis before I could finally start to make some time. That route just wasn't going to get us to CA when we needed to be there. So I decided to take the southern route. We went south the length of Virginia on I-81, at least I could do 65 mph, then 70 mph on I-40 across Tennessee. This route was more miles than the other route but I could go faster. I was figuring I needed to make it to Knoxville TN before I could quit driving friday. Saturday I would need to make it to Oklahoma City if I could. Sunday I would need to make it west of Albuquerque NM. Monday I would need to make Kingman AZ and then I had a chance of being in Tulare(North of Fresno) by noonish on tuesday.
Well that was the plan... I drove till midnight and I had to stop about 29 miles still inside of Virginia. I was about 120 miles short of Knoxville... not doing well. If I can't make up more miles on Saturday my dispatcher will swap my load with another truck, probably a team and then who knows when we would be in CA. Saturday I drove pretty steady all day, Sue is already sick of this truck! and this trip is just not worth pushing ourselves to the limit. It is a good thing I love to drive! but I have limits too. We do want to make it to the graduations and we need to be home; so I keep pushing.
Federal DOT regulation state we are allowd to only drive 10 hours and we have to take an 8 hour break. Thats one rule, we actually have to satisfy three rules; the 10 hour rule, another rule that says I can only work 15 hours a day before taking an 8 hour break("work" can be anything from driving, to fueling, to unloading freight. We don't usually have trouble with the 15 hour rule) Then we have to satisfy the 70 hour rule. That rule says I can only "work" 70 hours in any 8 day period.
Saturday I made it to Little Rock AR. a pretty good day. Sunday I made it to Amarillo TX. Monday I made it to Flagstaff AZ, I think we are going to be OK..(See next Blog...I want to tell you about a neat restaurant in Flagstaff AZ, that Sue and I tried out but that is another story and I'm getting long winded already.
In order to make it to Tulare by noon or so on Tuesday, I have to start driving an 2:00am but we made it there by 11:30! My logbook says I have worked 69 hours in only 5 days so that means Wednesday I will only be able to work 1 hour; frustrating... we want to be home but we are stuck in Bakersfield.. that is all I could do. So we sit all day Wednesday in a truck stop in Bakersfield. Sue and I watched the new 007 movie "Die Another Day"... that helped while away a few hours. Today I got up at 3:00 am and drove to Ontario for the final delivery of the lighting fixtures we had on board. Actually the first part of the delivery in Tulare was at a high school, they are remodeling the gym and I had the 476 new flourescent light they will install during the summer. I am going to stop for now, it's late Sue is already asleep and Im just about to fall asleep here in the chair in front of the computer. Tomorrow I will finish this... as I said earlier, I want to tell you about a really neat restaurant in Flagstaff AZ... Stay tuned... goodnight
posted by Tom at 11:05 PM